Introductions (Again)

I'm going to try to start this whole thing over. Here's my previous post, which I made under a different name:
"We'll start with some background on me. My gamertag has been Genghis Connor since I started playing Melee, which is my primary game. I began my journey in 2014, picking up Melee as Smash 4 was going to come out soon and I was hyped. At my "debut," I made a tiny little splash in the Smash scene by getting 3rd at Fight Pitt 5 in Smash 4 3DS playing as King Dedede. Since then I've primarily been a Melee Ice Climbers player. I actually started playing them as a joke. A Pikachu player named The Jets from my region (Pittsburgh) thought it would be funny if I showed up to our weekly and started wobbling everyone. Shockingly enough, when I started playing them and saw some idea of what they were, I never wanted to main anyone else. The idea of playing two characters at once with the same set of inputs was such a cool concept for me, and desyncs were just about the coolest thing I had seen in any game. With other characters in Melee or even other Smash games, I never felt such a strong, immediate, or lasting connection with any character besides the ICs. My journey since then has been a strange one. Like many Melee players, I felt very lost and confused for years. I read my share of Smashboards (which was on its way out even in 2014) and watched so many youtube videos, the Smash documentary included. For the first 6 months or so, I didn't win a single set. I barely won a game 3 last stock set against a bad Bowser with my at-the-time white Marth and felt proud of myself. I didn't feel an immediate connection with the game. My goal in the very beginning was nothing short of winning every set that I played, and every time I learned something, it was only secondary to my desire to finally beat the people around me. Once I found ICs, something changed. All of a sudden, I truthfully loved what I was doing. I didn't let it show that often, as I tried to fit in with the Pittsburgh crowd by being loud, negative, and mean. I also still made winning the overarching goal, but I loved my character all the same.

Looking back, I acted both foolishly and yet very appropriately.

A big part of my early Melee career was the desire to win, but now that I know enough to win on a local level, all I want is improvement. This is indicative of a larger journey of self-discovery that I've been going through, as well. I love the idea of opposites in balance. You can see this in many of my favorite games and pieces of art, which I'm sure I'll touch on in later entries. For now though, it suffices to say that I'm an Ice Climbers main. They're a character that combines human and computer, boy and girl, yin and yang, etc. Same story with most of my life. Finding my "inner self," or the subconscious mind, and freeing my "Nana," my feminine side, has been just about the most rewarding experience of my life. I never could have done it without Melee, and for that I'll forever be grateful.

One thing that helped me get better at Melee, surprisingly to some, was learning how to play Street Fighter and later Guilty Gear. I started with Street Fighter 4 as Street Fighter 5 was going to come out soon and I was hyped (which should sound familiar). The reason I actually became interested in the wonderful world of 2D fighters was the prodding of a Pittsburgh Smasher, SWED. He told me that my execution in Melee was getting better but I still lacked the fundamentals of spacing, timing, and adaptation. Being a child, I told him he was an idiot. Knowing he was right, I quietly picked up the game that supposedly was all fundamentals: Street Fighter. I've played almost every character who originated in Street Fighter 2 during my time with the fourth iteration of the series, but I definitely enjoy Dhalsim -- the stretchy-armed Yoga-powered zoner -- the most. He has many things I enjoy about a fighting game character: different states of the game depending on who is winning the exchanges, different moves for every situation, set play during knockdowns, etc. Of course, I knew none of those things at the time, and instead just liked Dhalsim because I liked him; this was very much a Melee player move. But, just as subconsciously as my love for these characters, I started getting better. Moving back and forth between the games, I gradually began to understand the habits of my opponents, where I could get my openings, and things like that.

Time passed and I gradually began to understand Melee as a fighting game rather than treating them as two separate entities. I picked up more games like UNIEL and Guilty Gear, and within them saw similar archetypes of characters emerge. There seemed to always be a "Ryu" and "Ken," a big grappler, a few zoners, stuff like that. As I always played Melee, I began to understand that the same concepts of spacing, timing, and adaptation still applied, and I even began to draw parallels between characters, like Mario as Ryu, Doctor Mario as Evil Ryu, Luigi as Ken, and other less specific parallels like seeing Marth as a zoner. Reading Daigo Umehara's book during this summer of 2017 was the last thing that allowed my time with the two supposedly different genres of games to finally make sense. It's called The Will to Keep Winning for those unfamiliar, and it details Daigo's rise to becoming the greatest Street Fighter player of all time. It's actually very applicable to real life, with plenty of excellent analogies and pieces of wisdom. I'll be referencing that book in this blog plenty, and I'd recommend that anyone read it. My reading of the wisdom of fighting game masters as well as playing their games for myself has helped immensely, both onscreen and in my overall life.

With these changes in my perspective on what I've been playing through the latter half of my teenage years, I've decided to change my gamertag to Maryu. The act of changing my tag is symbolic of the kind of rebirth I've been going through. The name holds a lot of meaning for me as well, as it's a reflection of not only two of my favorite characters in Smash and Street Fighter, but the connection between the two. Mario and Ryu both fill the role of honest and balanced all-rounder that forms the basis for all other characters. This connection points to who I am as a player in both worlds, and I hope one day to be able to bridge the gap between our communities. I want to show Smash players the value in reading your opponent and adapting, and show fighting game players the immense power of acting as your character, being truly immersed in their tools and expressing your will. The name does actually apply to Ice Climbers as well, as their design relies heavily on this concept of balance. That's the yin and yang all-rounder kind of balance, not the "Evil Ryu is so OP Capcom pls" kind of balance, by the way. I'll discuss at length the ICs' connection to Mario soon. Regardless, this new name reflects who I am much better than my old one, and everyone will doubtlessly keep calling me Connor anyway.

Now for the point of this blog. I'll be covering various topics, with the primary focus being improvement -- improvement at Melee, fighting games in general, and maybe even in terms of making and appreciating art. I'll take a critical look at many video games, and might even do an entry or two on my favorite films. With this blog, I hope to express who I am, to help others see where they could improve, and just to have fun talking about my favorite subjects. I'm certain that I'll look back on this entry and many in front of it when I'm older with the same feeling that I look back on my early days now -- a feeling that I used to be a complete idiot.

That's fine, though. Part of getting better is acknowledging your flaws."

While most of that post still holds true, I realize now that I didn't truly internalize that last sentence. I tried to reject my old name, out of shame for my own flaws. I felt that if I had a new tag, I could have a kind of rebirth, free from my past faults. Of course,  I shouldn't have hidden from myself. I ran from who I was, trying to force my interpretation of Melee and fighting games in general on others, but Genghis Connor is here to stay this time. I realized this through a few interactions. Although I expected the people in my region to hate the tag, their reasons for doing so surprised me. I was almost taken aback at how many people actually did like my old tag. For some reason, I had assumed that it was awful because it didn't directly reflect my play. Of course, when I chose this old tag, I wanted only to have a funny enough name that would communicate the simple message, "Call me Connor, everybody." That's a fine enough reason to keep Genghis Connor around. Another reason for the switch would certainly be my own ego, something that I still struggle with despite trying to claim the contrary. While I certainly have some measure of skill as both Mario in Smash and Ryu in Street Fighter, I have a long way to go in both games and never really played either character as my main. It's so easy to fall into the trap of thinking you're amazing at Melee and as such no longer want to improve. It's a big part of why people hit "plateaus," or stay the same skill level for an extreme amount of time. We become comfortable with what we can do, instead of focusing on what we can do better. In trying to internalize this message, I failed. I ran away from my flaws and tried to distance myself from them in a twisted and failed attempt at trying to grow.

After playing under my new tag at a few weeklies (including the best weekly PGH has held in quite a while), I realized that it wasn't right for me. I realized that I was going to be stuck with my old name forever, and also realized I was more than OK with that. When we go through a change, we stay the same person as before, with all the weight of our past failures. That doesn't mean we're trapped under the weight of these failures - far from it. If I am going to change for the better, it's necessary that I remember my mistakes and why I wanted to improve in the first place. So to those of you who know me, I would ask that you stick with me through this new chapter in my life. One day, I aspire to be one of the best Melee players in the world, and part of my path there involves becoming a much better person than I am today.

The journey to improvement starts within yourself. I would invite any of you to take this journey with me. Learn from your mistakes, don't hide from them. Understand your failures, because that is the path to doing the right thing.